


I Like the New Guy

by AngeNoir



Series: Write-Away Giveaway Fills on Tumblr [7]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, The Losers (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-21
Updated: 2013-05-21
Packaged: 2017-12-12 12:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/811641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first mission with the new guy, everything goes right. Until it doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Like the New Guy

**Author's Note:**

> As a celebration for reaching 100 followers on tumblr, I'm holding a giveaway [here](http://outercorner.tumblr.com/post/51036127748/write-away-giveaway-last-call-3-hours-left), and what I'm giving away is prompt fills for anyone who asks! I received this prompt from [slashersivi](http://slashersivi.tumblr.com):
> 
> _CougarJensen AU your choice unless you'd like me to be more specific_
> 
> I had three ideas and went with this one (and went a little crazy, oops).

Jensen was cackling over the comms, in his particularly spectacular insane manner, one that made Cougar think that Jensen was just crazy enough to stick with them long-term, and Cougar was doing his best to lay down suppressing fire for Roque and Clay while keeping an eye on Jensen’s position – because of course the plan screwed up six ways to Sunday, it always did, in the worst way possible, there was a reason their nickname was the _Losers_ and not the _Winners_ – but it was increasingly difficult because, to keep the ‘bad guys’ from finding Jensen, Roque, Lilah, Clay, and Sam were moving farther off, but their distraction was fairly limited by the fact that they did not have a lot of ammo left, and the bad guys (smugglers, this time, normally left for less important teams, except this gang had upgraded to smuggling humans and one of the people kidnapped had been a Senator’s daughter) figured out Roque and Clay didn’t have a lot left in them, and that Lilah and Sam were more focused on getting Roque and Clay out than ranging out and attacking.

Pooch and Trixie, at least, were the aces up their sleeve, waiting with the getaway car, because this really wasn’t supposed to be a full assault, just a recon, just getting in and getting the information off the servers and getting out. He kept asking whether he should engage, but Cougar kept growling a negative at him.

He really hoped Jensen could handle himself, since he really needed to keep Clay and Roque’s damnfool selves from dying.

“The tree,” Isabel, his Aplomado falcon, murmured in his ear.

He didn’t question – while he had good eyesight, she was a _falcon_ – and aimed immediately at the foliage across the compound, spraying the leaves with bullets.

“Ooh, that’s right, baby,” Jensen crooned over the comms, and Cougar did his best not to chuckle aloud. No sense encouraging the type of behavior Roque would likely attack Jensen for one day.

“Cougar!” Clay roared over the comms. “We need to get outta here, fast! Exit!”

Cougar’s eyes darted across the compound, calculating position and security cameras and Pooch’s position. “Forward, boss; hit the wall and go left. Behind the trucks, cut the fence.” There were security cameras lining the fence, of course, but Jensen had made a block of them play on loop so as not to alert those watching the cameras; Cougar hoped he remembered the position of said blackout correctly, because he didn’t want the smugglers figuring out exactly where Clay and Roque had ducked out, not just yet. Still, even if they did figure out where Clay and Roque had disappeared to, Cougar was going to give them something more important to worry about.

“Jensen,” Isabel whispered softly in his ear.

Cougar’s eyes flicked back, all the way across the compound, to see that someone had noticed that the small building where all the computers and offices were had been locked, and was calling for help as he kicked at the locked door.

Cursing under his breath, he murmured, “Jensen.”

“Just get me an exit, Cougs, I’m almost done here!”

Cougs?

Isabel huffed a laugh in Cougar’s ear and mantled. “Company, left side.”

Cougar tilted his head at the window. Needing no further instruction, Isabel flew out the window to harry the men climbing up the fire escape of the warehouse Cougar had picked as his perch. Of course, depending on _their_ daemons, he’d need to worry about them sending their daemons ahead of them.

“Jensen, only exit is where we came in or across the compound,” he said quietly, spraying the ground again to give Roque and Clay and their daemons cover fire. He watched as Lilah, a huge Rottweiler, bounded ahead, darting to the left and behind the first truck, and Roque followed. Clay and Sam were still stuck behind the low concrete wall that traveled the inside of the courtyard.

More shouting – the men had gotten open the doors to the offices. Jensen was in an office that had a window, and no one was obviously around, so Cougar turned his attention back to his CO and XO, squeezing off another round and watching the gold of a daemon dying with something akin to muted grief.

There was a defiant shriek, and something shuddered in Cougar’s very soul. Twisting around, pulling out his M11 and shot quickly, getting a snake daemon in the middle and the shoulder of the guy climbing in side window.

“Cougar, cover!” Clay bellowed over the comms.

Muttering under his breath in fast and pissed off Spanish, he shot again at the window and prayed the snake was either dead, too hurt to approach him, or not poisonous. In any case, he lifted up his rifle and turned back to the window in front of him and immediately caught sight of the problem – Sam had taken a bullet in her hind leg, and coupled with the fact that she’d sprained her front leg leaping over the fence at the outset of this mission, she wouldn’t be able to walk. Clay needed to carry her, which meant he needed Cougar’s help getting across the last open area.

On the small plus side, Roque should have gotten the fence cut open by now and maybe even have gotten to Pooch, gotten his leg looked at and Lilah’s shoulder patched up.

“ _Jake_!”

Years of training kept Cougar’s eyes and aim from jumping over to where Jensen was, but only just. As it was, he gritted his teeth and squeezed off round after round at the men cornering his CO, not caring if it gave away his position because right now, they needed to let his CO out of there so they could all regroup back at their camp and decode the information Jensen had gotten.

“Shit, fuck, c’mon Kiki, let’s go, time’s a-wasting,” Jensen’s voice came across the comms, muffled, as if it wasn’t up against his mouth, and Cougar could hear pain in that voice.

Clay hauled Sam up onto his shoulders, which was pretty good considering that Clay was operating with a graze to the head and a cut-up arm and he was hauling sixty-seven to sixty-eight ponds of squirming German Shepard who didn’t know when to quit. A lucky shot got Clay’s calf as he rounded the corner, but he kept going, and Cougar’s fire kept anyone from following right away.

A shout from behind him, and a defiant falcon’s screech, and he had to stop laying down fire and whip around just in time to catch the knife in his shoulder instead of his back. Letting out a sharp hiss, he grabbed the M11 as Isabel shot through the window and raked talons across his attacker’s face.

One quick shot, and another at the head cresting in the side window, and then he was turning back to the window in front of him. He needed to get this done, because even now he watched men running behind the trucks, looking for Clay and Roque and their daemons, and he needed to give them something else to think about.

A concentrated burst of fire distracted them, and then he closed his eyes in one long blink, steadied himself. Opened his eyes, sighted down the barrel at the largest truck, aiming for the last bit of supplies Roque was supposed to have left stored underneath it. At least, he hoped he was aiming at what Roque left and not a particularly large rock or something similar…

The truck exploded in a satisfyingly large fireball.

There were shouts of alarm, and when Cougar looked over at where Jensen had last been – he couldn’t see the hacker, which worried him – the men that had been pouring through the doors and searching the offices reversed, responding to the roar of the fire and the secondary explosion.

Roque must have either scrounged up more dynamite or found an alternate explosive device; they hadn’t had much explosives left at all, and the resulting fireball was too large for their supplies.

Isabel landed on his shoulders, head rubbing against his cheek. Automatically, his hand came up to rub her chest, even as he quickly began packing up his stuff. “Jensen?” he asked quietly.

“Can’t see him,” she replied, just as softly. “Kiki’s on the roof, though.”

He turned in surprise, because Kiki, Jensen’s black squirrel, almost never left his shoulder. He didn’t know why the two of them were far more touchy than most human-daemon pairs, why Kiki almost never left Jensen’s pocket, but the fact that she was on the roof didn’t bode well. “Hurt?” he questioned, zipping up his carry-bag and hefting it onto his shoulder.

Isabel cocked her head, even as he moved to the window and began climbing down. “Looks like,” she said finally. “I think.”

Definitely not a good thing. At least, for the most part, no one else was climbing up the ladder to get at him, but the warehouse he’d chosen was across the street, not part of the compound Roque, Jensen, and Clay had entered. Running as quickly as he could without actually drawing attention, he slipped around to the initial breech point, where the three of them and their daemons had cut the fence and climbed through. It wasn’t the most defensible position – which was why Jensen had looped the cameras on the opposite side of the fence, as that was supposed to be the exit point, especially since that was where Pooch was nearest – but it would have to do for right now, since all the attention was on that side of the compound.

“Jensen!” he hissed through the comms, moving towards the office building. No more gunshots, but there was a third column of black smoke rising into the air; another car must’ve caught on fire.

“ _Jensen!_ ” he snarled, and finally he heard a dazed moan from the stacks of wood a good five hundred yards away from the office building. Adjusting his trajectory, Isabel keeping an eye out for enemies, he found Jensen slumped against the woodpile, blood staining his gut and calf, and still oozing. Cursing under his breath, Cougar hefted Jensen’s arm over his shoulder, Isabel taking into flight so that Jensen could lean against Cougar’s shoulders, and he shook the giant blond. “Your daemon,” he demanded. “Your daemon, call her!”

“Sh’can’t hear me,” Jensen slurred, pupils different sizes. “Hurt.”

It wasn’t proper protocol, was taboo in normal society, but in the army, you did what had to be done to get your men out. Cougar would have to apologize later. “Isabel,” he growled.

Isabel hesitated – she knew Cougar’s feelings on this, on Jensen, but he pinned her with a glower and she sighed.

Cougar helped Jensen limp to the exit, shooting at the one guard that appeared – alerting the others that there was still an active shooter around, and he could hear the renewed shouts, but they were close enough that it shouldn’t matter – when he suddenly shuddered, a deep warmth and pulsing energy brushing up against his very soul. On his shoulders, Jensen let out a giggle, listing to the side and head dropping to brush his cheek against the brim of Cougar’s hat. “You’re so _warm_ , Cougs!” he laughed, and Cougar tried not to find that endearing, he really, really did.

As he dragged Jensen through the hole in the fence, shots rang out and pinged against the metal pole by his head. There was no cover here, nothing but flat, open ground – the other exit point had trees at least – and so he looped Jensen’s arm around his shoulder again and began to run, forcing Jensen into a painful trot. Still, the feeling of strength and limitless energy didn’t disappear, until Isabel came out of the sky, Kiki gently clutched in her talons, to deposit the black squirrel on the top of Cougar’s hat.

Cougar snarled through his gritted teeth, just as more shots fired and Jensen grunted, steps faltering.

Just then Pooch pulled up, beat-up van flying open and eager hands dragging him and Jensen inside the body of the van, barely staying open long enough for Isabel to dart inside, and then Pooch was off, driving like the maniac he was, the window rolled down and Trixie acting like a dog, head out the window, tongue lolling in the breeze, laughing hysterically as Pooch shot down a narrow street and scattered sheep in his wake.

On the floor of the van, Roque and Clay – hastily and badly patched up themselves – were quickly bandaging Jensen before more of the fool’s blood spilled out of his body. Cougar leaned against the side of the van – his wounds were minor, compared to Jensen’s, and he could wait – and took his hat off his head to look at the depression on top.

The tiny body of Kiki was curled up, vicious talon marks scoring her back and side. She’d heal – no one knew how daemons healed themselves, but thank whatever higher power that they did – and Cougar had to physically restrain himself from stroking a finger down that silky looking black fur in a show of comfort.

Isabel perched on Cougar’s shoulder and hopped down to his arm for a closer look. “I like them too,” she murmured, so quietly that no one, not even Samantha or Lilah, sprawled in the back, heard.

But Jensen smiled goofily, and Kiki snuggled deeper in his hat, and Cougar smiled quietly to himself.


End file.
